Widgets as Educational Content Delivery Vehicles
A widget, sometimes referred to as a Dashboard Widget (Mac), a Gadget (Windows Vista) or just as a desktop widget, is a combination of a graphic symbol and some program code to perform specific functions. The specific functions widgets can perform are only limited by the developer but they are often used to provide a graphical way to access online information such as the weather, news and sports scores or as a way to access some of your computer’s functions like telling the time or using the calculator. If you have visited the SAS Educational Portal, you will see widgets throughout the pages. There is, for example, a Shanghai weather widget on the main portal page along with two world news widgets. I have added a few more widgets to a new page on the portal called “Edu Fun.” The widgets used in the Edu Portal are created using small pieces of code contained in graphical data blocks which provides users with access to online databases. The variety of databases to which widgets can currently connect are vast including online sources such as social networks like Ning, Facebook and MySpace or data from national weather services and major sporting events. The beauty of widgets as self-contained information channels is their portability. They can be used on all sorts of digital devices. Their portability is due to universal standards for widget development. These standards ensure widgets are created using similar programming rules thus allowing them to be used across multiple platforms like web pages, cell phones and computer desktops. You’ll find widgets on blog sites, Netvibes, PageFlakes or personal Goggle, Yahoo and MSN pages. The widget allows you to bring information to where you want it. All that is required is the small bit of code from the widget developer. If there is interactivity or graphic animation in the widgets, it is also included in the widget code the owner provides. The content in widgets is as dynamic as the information sources from which they are drawn. If the owner of a widget changes the data sources it accesses or develops their own data, the content distributed to the widget users changes. Because of a widget’s ability to provide portable access to dynamic information, as an educator and technology specialist, I see great potential for their use as educational content delivery vehicles. In its most simplistic form, widgets could be used by a teacher to send out course information and important announcements like deadlines directly to student’s computer desktop or cell phones. In broader use, widgets could be used to directly access a course wiki, blog or virtual learning environment site like Moodle. Access to shared online publishing sites like wikis allows learners in the community portable access to constantly updated material provided by all members in the learning community. As most online sites include other digital material such as links to additional information on the web, files to be downloaded or video and audio streams, they could also be fed through a widget. I can see down the road a virtual learning environment where students simply get their course widget code on the first day of class and through it, are provided with a portable connection to their online learning environment even on their cell phones on bus rides home. Another step toward creating a school without walls.
The limitation for widgets at present is that while they are portable, for the most part, they are only read tools for online information. The next logical step has already begun with the development of widgets that now allow users to also write to external data sources making them truly web 2.0 tools.
As I begin to understand the potential for these ubiquitous data feeds, I feel compelled to test the concept out during some upcoming vacation time by developing my first personal widget which would access some data information I have on the web. If successful, the next step would be to explore having this piloted in the context of a more defined learning environment. For those with similar interests and have some programming experience, here is a Widget Development Manual I have been using.